Jeanne
Curran
August 2013
Jeanne
Curran
,
RN
Primary Care Faculty Clinic
VCU Health System
Richmond
,
VA
United States

 

 

 

... Jeanne spends her days tied to a phone triaging the needs of our very complicated internal medicine patients. Our patients love to hear her voice when they call because she treats each one with respect and understanding. Often you would think she is speaking with someone from her own family. Providers respect her clinical judgment completely and have even been known to go to her for advice on certain matters. She goes above and beyond her job description in countless ways, never asking for anything in return.

From one of our esteemed faculty:

Jeanne is an outstanding patient advocate. She is wonderfully kind and caring, especially with those patients who have emotional or psychiatric problems or who are cognitively challenged. She has a fundamental respect for each individual as a human being and when she sees any struggling patient, she volunteers to help. I've seen her comfort crying or frightened patients, giving them a hug or taking their hand and guiding them to where they need to go. She is the first to volunteer to take a patient to the ER and keeps up a steady stream of comforting conversation en route. I've seen her skillfully de-escalate patients who are verbally threatening or disruptive. She never raises her voice or loses her calm demeanor and her kindness and her desire to help are foremost. She has a strong background in psychiatry and often helps with her keen observations about what "just happened" and in debriefing. She has excellent communication skills.

She is equally kind and caring with staff and again is the advocate for staff who are sick or in need. She is often the one who gets the care or initiates the collection to honor a fellow staff member. She opens her home to needy or lonely staff. Her generosity and hospitality are legion.

Jeanne brings a unique set of skills to nursing triage in the ACC primary care faculty clinic. She is also reliable, hard-working, and knowledgeable and the epitome of what a patient-centered nurse should be.

From our Division Chair:

Jeanne is an experienced nurse who does a superb job in helping to manage a very complex and chronically ill patient population. She has great clinical intuition, and I am very comfortable with her clinical judgment when she discusses medical problems with my patients. Combined with this clinical acumen is her sense of compassion for the patients and her desire to improve their health and their quality of life. It's important to note that this compassion extends to her colleagues as well - Jeanne genuinely cares about the well-being of those with whom she works, and she provides support and advice to those who work with her every day. I am proud to consider Jeanne a colleague and am proud to support her nominator for this award.

From one of her fellow triage nurses:

Jeanne stops what she is doing in order to help patients in need. Always willing to transport patients whether it is another department, to first floor to meet their rides, even on the street if they are having difficulty getting to their car. One of her patients is over 400 lbs., lives out of town and is a transportation nightmare due to his multiple medical problems and need for a stretcher. I have heard her spend great amounts of time with transportation to assure he gets to his appointments. She is competent, caring and a great resource for us if our patients have psychiatric crisis.